I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the setting or resetting of digital dates for months, days and years in digital time displays.
II. Description of the Prior Art
Digital wristwatches and other digital timepieces frequently include a display of the numerical date for each day of the month, often with an abbreviated name of each day as well. When power is interrupted to such displays, such as replacement of a depleted watch battery, or outages of line power, or cleaning or repair operations, many such displays revert to a default condition of all zeros, or to the month, day and year date when the calendar software was originally programmed into the timepiece. Therefore, after such interruptions, all dates have to be reset to the digital values of the prevailing month, day and year in order to synchronize the display with the current time.
In some products, particularly wristwatches, digital values of each month, day and year are displayed in the setting/resetting mode with a pair of digits which scroll through ranges of one through twelve for the months and one through thirty-one for the days, with or without non-significant zero digits in front of single digital values representing the first nine months and the first nine days, respectively. Similar scrolling through pairs of digits is used to display the values of years, beginning, for example, with 00 for the year 2000 and continuing up to 99 for the year 2099, given the recent advent of the second millennium.
III Recognition of Problems in the Prior Art
The above-described scrolling systems are subject to problems caused by the redundancy and repetition of identical digital values. For example, Jan. 1, 2001 conceivably could be represented by three repetitions of the value 01, thus requiring the user typically to remember the scrolling sequence, for example, first the month, then the day and finally the year, as is usually explained in the operating instructions, in order to understand what the displayed digital value represents. Similar redundancies are encountered between pairs of identical digital values representing months and days, months and years, and days and years. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that in some parts of the world, other scrolling sequences are used, such as the year, month and day, or the day, month and year. Therefore, there is a need for overcoming the above-described problems in order to facilitate and increase certainty in the setting or resetting of digital date displays.
The present invention provides a simple and effective solution to the above-described problems, achieved by a novel array of display elements that can be selectively activated to display the letters xe2x80x9cMxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cDxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cYxe2x80x9d, standing for month, day and year, when each of such digital dates is being set or reset in a digital time display. As a result, the viewer is unambiguously informed of which specie of time value is being set or reset, even if identical digital values are displayed during the setting or resetting sequence. This eliminates the need to remember what particular sequence of values is presented by any specific timepiece during the setting/resetting mode, and enables the setting or resetting process to be confidently performed without any confusion, uncertainty or ambiguity.
FIG. 1 illustrates a preferred embodiment of digital display elements arrayed in a manner which enables setting or resetting digital date values in accordance with the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a similar view which illustrates activation of the FIG. 1 array to enable setting the date of a current month.
FIG. 3 is a similar view which illustrates activation of FIG. 1 to enable setting the date of a current day.
FIG. 4 is a similar view which illustrates activation of FIG. 1 to enable setting the date of a current year.